


Fighting Your Instincts

by PistachioWritings



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: F/F, M/M, Moral Ambiguity, jons got issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-26
Updated: 2020-03-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:20:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22901611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PistachioWritings/pseuds/PistachioWritings
Summary: What makes a man a monster? Jon is struggling to maintain his humanity in the face of his new instincts. He treads the line between man and monstrosity as he questions his own morality in a world where the word has no meaning.
Relationships: Basira Hussain/Alice "Daisy" Tonner, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 3
Kudos: 72





	1. A Moment of Weakness

“…Statement ends.” 

*click*

Jon set down the recorder with an unsatisfied sigh. He didn’t have anything more to say about this statement; it was an old one concerning the Ceaseless Watcher. Those tended to be the least satisfying of the statements. Just recycled fear, losing its potency with every reading. They always reminded him of eating stale toast. It was enough to keep him going until the next piece of toast, but the meal, if it could even be called that, brought no enjoyment and left a dry, disappointing taste in his mouth. It left him still mostly hollow. 

He yawned with exhaustion as he returned the statement to its proper place in the depths of the archive. The past few months of fighting the drive to take a statement directly from a subject, to feed directly, had taken its toll on him. Three months of recycled fear, three months of stale toast. He didn’t notice it himself, but the effects of his hunger were more than psychological. He’d lost a significant amount of weight from his already wiry frame and the circles under his eyes were growing ever darker. Every day he had less energy. The fight was draining and he could feel himself losing the battle against his nature.

It was late to the point that it had become early when he finished his daily duties. The longer he went without, the slower he moved and the longer he took to complete even the most mundane tasks. ‘Feed your patron or it’ll feed on you.’ The phrase echoed through his mind, its meaning becoming more real with every day. He saw no point in going home just to return in a couple of hours, so he instead decided to take a walk. Somehow he’d convinced himself that the fresh London air was good for his health and had taken to regularly wandering her streets. Ironically, the idea had come from a statement, the subject having mentioned in passing how they would go on walks at night to clear their head. It had ended with the subject wandering into a trap set by the Lonely, but that wasn’t the point. Really he just needed another way to distract himself.

The night was clear and crisp, but Jon didn’t notice the cold. The wind whistled through the trees, whispering secrets that no one could hear, and the distant stars twinkled coldly from above like silent sentinels. The street watched without eyes. Darkened storefronts long since closed for the night were home to lifeless metal cameras, their sightless lenses hiding in shadowy corners, recording everything unnoticed. The unseen yet all-seeing eyes were everywhere, always watching yet never noticed. Jon was one of these. He roamed unnoticed, just another night owl out too late, another nobody. At this hour, the streets were usually fairly empty of pedestrians, so he could lose himself in his thoughts without worrying about running into any people. Or any temptations. Temptations like the woman hurrying past him in a heavy winter coat, focused only on reaching her destination. 

In her rush, she didn’t see him, but he saw her. To anybody else, she wouldn’t have been worth bothering to notice. But as she passed him, Jon could feel her fear. He could almost smell it, the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck standing on end as if electrified. He could tell she’d had a run-in with one of the powers, and recently too. He felt himself turn, begin to follow her. His movements weren’t his own. His heartbeat quickened in his chest as he moved towards her, his hunger growing. They’d made it almost to the end of the street before Jon caught himself. before he realized what he was doing. It took most of his willpower just to stop his feet following her. It had been so long since he had properly fed, and fighting left him weak.

He collapsed onto the brick wall next to him and slid slowly into a sitting position on the cold concrete sidewalk feeling drained from the effort. His muscles were tense, his teeth gritted and his fists clenched as he fought his instincts. He was nearly shaking with the hunger. The woman continued her distracted walk, not having noticed the disheveled man following her. The further she got from Jon, the less he felt her fear. His hunger didn’t lessen with the distance, but the physical separation made it easier to fight. The fear was no longer so close, no longer directly in front of him, tempting him. Resting his head on his knees, Jon closed his eyes and tried to push the woman from his mind. He knew it wasn’t her fault. She had nothing to do with how he felt. She was just another helpless victim of the powers like himself. He repeated silently to himself his tired reasons for his abstinence. He didn’t want to be a monster. He didn’t want to be evil. Supporting the powers was objectively morally wrong. He didn’t want to hurt people. Every repetition was less convincing than the last, turning from reasonable explanations to empty excuses having lost all meaning. He felt the wet tears begin to run silently down his cheeks as he desperately tried in vain to deny the emptiness of his own words. Eventually, he slipped into a dreamless sleep there, the glow from an empty convenience store’s windows not quite reaching him.

“Sir, you can’t sleep here.” Jon awoke to the bright light of a flashlight held by the backlit outline of a middle-aged cop. The light hurt and he couldn’t really see, but he lifted his head and appeared to look the officer in the eyes. He could feel the fear in the man. Taste it in the air around him. It was buried deep beneath decades of denial and therapy, but it was there, calling to him.

A toothy grin spread across his face as he responded, wider and sharper than it should have been. A darkness shone from behind his green eyes. His too many eyes. “My apologies, Officer Harper, I must have been more tired than I thought.” The officer’s name badge was completely obscured in the dark shadows. “Let me introduce myself,” he rose smoothly, confidently to his feet and offered a hand in greeting. His quiet voice echoed unnaturally in the officer’s ears in an almost hypnotic manner. When the officer hesitantly took the scarred offering, Jon watched him stiffen slightly, glancing around as if he were afraid he was being watched. “I’m the Archivist. Please, Mark,” there was no way he should have known the man’s name and they both knew it. “Tell me your story.”

And for the first time in three months, Jon had a fresh statement.


	2. Taking Responsibility

When Daisy arrived at the Institute that morning, something felt off. She couldn’t put her finger on exactly what it was, but something was different. The walls that always seemed to be watching felt less attentive. Something felt wrong, and she didn’t like it.

As she made her way through the nondescript halls down to the archives she kept a sharp eye out for something, anything, to explain it. The few people she passed appeared as ignorant of their surroundings as ever. She always thought it strange that they could work so closely to a literal archive of fear without noticing a thing. The building itself vibrated with the fear it housed, but humans have an uncanny knack for ignoring the things they’d rather not know. How appropriate that the inclination for ignorance be so strong in a place so closely tied to the fear of knowledge.

Nothing was different in the empty halls of the institute. The faded paint still covered the aging walls, the cameras in the corners still followed Daisy’s every movement. They followed everybody. Yet somehow their gaze felt less intense, less probing. 

The closer Daisy got to the archives proper, the more her suspicion grew. Whatever had changed was tied to the archives. She wasn’t surprised. She’d be more concerned if something weird happened and the archives weren’t involved. There was a reason nobody went there unless they had a good reason.

Now that the strange feeling was stronger, Daisy realized something about it. It wasn’t so much that something had changed as much as something was missing. She still wasn’t sure exactly what it was, but she knew she’d found the general area of its source. 

She was setting her bag down at her desk when she heard someone enter the room. Jon was humming contentedly to himself as he walked in, clearly unaware that he wasn’t alone. 

“Good morning, Jon,” she said, the greeting more a habit than anything else. 

The sound startled him. “Oh, hello, Daisy. I didn’t see you there,” he said, having relaxed once he saw who it was. “How are you?”

“I can’t complain, considering.” Neither of them were very good at small talk and it often led to rather awkward conversations. “Say, Jon,” she said, skipping to a more interesting subject, “did something happen here last night?”

Jon was confused by the question, though glad to be free of the trappings of polite conversation. “No, nothing. Why?”

“I don’t know, something just feels off. I figured you might know something.”

Jon shrugged noncommittally. Daisy thought this reaction seemed odd; he didn’t usually brush things off so quickly. She watched suspiciously as he returned to whatever it was he had been doing, never sure how much to trust him. He wasn’t human, after all. As she watched, something was off about his appearance. It was subtle, almost imperceptible, but it looked like he was standing straighter. His skin had more color and the dark circles under his eyes were almost gone. He was more pleasant than usual. Just one night of good sleep wasn’t enough to make this significant of a change. This was not the dull, hollow, irritable man she’d left in the archives the night before.

This was what had changed, she realized. Whenever something happened to Jon, the archives themselves tended to react, they were so inextricably linked. Jon seemed less drained than usual and the archives weren’t as draining. He was keeping something from her. What had he… “Wait.” Suddenly it clicked in her mind. This wasn’t good.

“Jon, did you…” she didn’t want it to be true as she felt the familiar rage starting to bubble in her blood. “Did you feed on somebody?”

“No? What do you mean?” Jon turned back around to look at her, feigning ignorance. There was no way she could know, right?

“You did, didn’t you?” Daisy’s ears grew hot with anger. She could feel the Hunt tugging at the back of her brain, trying to reclaim its avatar. She clenched her fists and gritted her teeth in an attempt to calm herself. Just because Jon had given in didn’t mean she had to as well.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“How can you stand there and deny it?” Daisy was quickly losing her grip on her emotions. It had been so long since she’d given in to the anger. Breathing steadily was becoming difficult. The rage welled up in her and she could hear nothing beyond Jon’s lies and the blood rushing in her ears. The Hunt’s call was growing stronger with every passing second. “Stop lying to me, Jon, I know what you did!”

“No, you don’t!” 

It wasn’t exactly an admission of guilt, but it was enough. She shoved him into the shelves behind him, causing a loud crash as he fell. 

How she had figured it out, Jon didn’t know, but he could see the dark fire in her glare and he knew she wasn’t planning on letting him get out alive. She was quickly losing to the anger. Something had to change. 

“Daisy, calm down. We can work this out,” he said from his position on the ground, searching for her behind her mask of rage. The Daisy he knew was almost completely obscured by the Hunt. “Just calm down.”

Daisy bared her teeth in a wolfish sneer. “The monster wants me to calm down. Hilarious. What, are you afraid I might give in to the Hunt, Archivist?” She grabbed him by the throat. “Hypocrite,” she growled as her grip tightened.

She was almost gone and Jon was beginning to struggle breathing. He hated using his powers on his friends, but he couldn’t think of any other way to escape. “Let me go, Daisy,” he commanded with all the force he could muster. This aspect of compulsion he hadn’t yet mastered, but it was enough to slow her down. She still had him pinned to the ground, but he could breathe a little better. 

“No,” she hissed, still committed to her task. “Monsters don’t get to live.”

“Let me go!” Jon focused all his energy into the command. It worked this time, she released her grip on his throat. For a split second, he saw a flash of surprise run across her face, but it was quickly replaced by a new and stronger fury.

Daisy pulled her arm back, her hand now clenched in a tight fist, and was prepared to break his jaw when two pairs of hands grabbed her from behind. Martin and Basira had apparently heard the crash from when Jon had hit the floor and came to investigate. Jon and Daisy had been too distracted to notice their arrival, so the element of surprise was on their side.

Daisy wasn’t too keen on being restrained. She strained unsuccessfully against her captors’ grasp in an attempt to get back to her attack. While Martin held her from behind, Basira softly tried to calm her down. She brushed Daisy’s hair from her eyes and helped her through the breathing exercises the two of them practiced together. It took a while, but with the help of Basira’s calming presence, Daisy eventually relaxed to the point where she was no longer actively trying to kill Jon. 

Once the room returned to a state of relative civility, it was clear that an explanation was needed. When Basira took charge and asked what happened, Daisy responded with a simple statement, “I was keeping my end of a deal.”

“I’m going to need a little more than that, Daisy. Why were you two fighting?”

“Remember when I told him that if he slipped up, I’d kill him?” Daisy spoke quietly, keeping an icy glare trained on Jon.

“I do,” Basira said.

“He slipped up.”

“I- fine, yes. I made a mistake,” Jon said defensively, “but you didn’t have to try to kill me over it.”

“You attacked somebody and then when I confronted you about it, you used your mind control on me!” Daisy started towards him, stopped only by Basira’s stepping between them.

“That’s not what happened and you know it!” Both parties were getting riled up once again. “You were going to kill me. Did you expect me to just lay down? I was defending myself!”

Daisy growled at him. If Basira hadn’t been standing there, blocking any direct actions either of them might take on the other, she looked like she would have tried to hit him again. Instead, the two exchanged dark glares before Daisy stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind her. Torn, Basira looked from Jon to the door and back before saying, “We’re not done here,” and following Daisy into the hall.

The door closed quietly behind Basira, leaving Jon and Martin alone in the now-silent room. For a moment they simply stood there, listening to the soft electric hum of the lights and each trying to process the intense scene that had just ended. Where the air had been tense with high emotion only a moment ago, there was now an almost vacuum-like emptiness.

As he sorted out the past few minutes in his mind, Jon felt the confusion and anxiety solidify in his mind. “She could have killed me, Martin,” he whispered, beginning to shake. He’d been so calm when Daisy was at his throat. Only now was he able to process how much danger he had actually been in.

“Are you okay?” Jon was too distracted by his own swirling emotions to hear the note of concern in Martin’s voice. Softly, Martin took one of his fidgeting hands and led him to one of the desks where they both sat down. 

Still in his own head, Jon held Martin’s hand, playing with it to distract his body while his mind worked. Mindlessly he stroked the soft skin, gently curling and uncurling Martin’s fingers. Staring blankly ahead, he said, “I would have thought she would understand. Of everybody, she should understand.” Martin’s hand was soft and warm. Comforting. Jon didn’t want to ever let it go. “It was an accident.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” Martin’s voice was gentle. 

Jon looked up into Martin’s familiar face. The face he’d been secretly stealing glances at for years. His kind, concerned eyes and the freckles that reminded him of constellations. There was nobody he’d rather talk to about what had happened. “I was starving, Martin,” he said. “I thought I was stronger, but I wasn’t. I- I’m not.” He looked back down and sighed. “I didn’t realize it at the time, but I wasn’t just taking a walk. I was hunting. Sometimes it feels like I’m not in control of my own mind. I can know the secrets of people long dead, I can make anybody answer anything I ask, but I don’t get to know my own motivations until it’s too late.” He twined Martin’s fingers in his own and ran his free hand through his long, prematurely greying hair. He laughed, short and low. “I was so proud of myself, y’know? I managed to stop myself from feeding on somebody else first. It was hard, but I fought it. I let her go.”

Jon smiled at the irony. “I let her go just to end up feeding on someone else. Stopping the first one took so much out of me, I fell asleep right there on the sidewalk. When that cop woke me up, neither of us had a chance.” 

He fell silent, once again lost in his thoughts. He was replaying the moment in his mind, trying to run through every possible way it could have happened. He tried to find a way that it could have gone that didn’t end in him feeding, as if imagining it could change what he did. Slowly he came to an unexpected realization: he didn’t want it to change. He hadn’t hidden from himself that he was hunting because he was ashamed of the act. He lied to himself because he didn’t want to admit that he wasn’t ashamed. The thought worried Jon. “What does that make me?” His whisper was almost inaudible, loud enough only that Martin reacted to the sound but not the words.

“Martin?” he asked, loud enough this time to warrant a response.

“Yeah?”

“What am I?” He didn’t expect an answer as he studied the wood grain of the desk.

“What do you mean?” 

“Am I a bad person, Martin?”

“Of course you’re not a bad person, Jon. Why would you think that?” Martin’s voice held genuine confusion.

“I hurt people. I dig up their worst nightmares and ruin their lives. And…” he hesitated, afraid to say the next part out loud. “And I like it. I make innocent people relive their most traumatic memories and it makes me feel good. When I feed on these people… it’s so much more than that. The word, it’s not enough.” He looked up at Martin, searching for a reaction, a sign of understanding. “When I take someone’s statement, I get this feeling. I can’t describe it. It’s like a warmth, as if every cell in my body is on fire, but in a good way. And the more fear I pull out of someone, the stronger it gets. I know it’s wrong, but it just feels so good.” Jon looked as if he might break into a nervous hysteria at any moment. “Those people, they don’t deserve what I do to them, but I can’t stop myself. And then I don’t feel sorry. Doesn’t that make me a bad person?”

Martin paused for a moment to process what he just heard, all the while searching Jon’s eyes. “No, Jon. It doesn’t. In no way does that make you a bad person.”

Now it was Jon’s turn to be confused. “Wh… how?”

“You question it. You said it yourself, you know it’s wrong. You recognize that your actions have consequences. You fight it.” Martin squeezed his hand. “Nobody can control their emotions, how things make them feel. What matters is what you do about them. And you, Jon, you do good. You fight your instincts because you’d rather suffer yourself than hurt somebody else. You protect people. You put everybody else before yourself. A bad person would never do anything like that.” Jon could see in his face that Martin was completely serious. He believed in Jon. Wholeheartedly.

That made one of them.

“This isn’t your fault, Jon. Don’t judge yourself on things you can’t control. Just keep fighting. You’ll figure it out. You always do.”

Jon’s chest hurt with emotion. How could Martin, sweet, good Martin, trust in him so completely? He sighed. “I guess I just need some time to think. You should go check on Daisy.”

“Okay, I’ll give you some space,” Martin said, standing. “Just promise you’ll come find me if you need anything?”

“Promise.”

At that, Martin left and Jon was once again alone. He massaged his sore throat as he contemplated what Martin had said. He had a point. It wasn’t Jon’s fault he wasn’t human. Not his fault he had needs and instincts his friends couldn’t understand. 

Or was it? Jon suddenly wasn’t sure as he remembered all the choices he had made. He willingly abandoned his humanity when he was in the coma. It might not have been his fault that the Eye wanted him in the first place, but everything beyond that had been the results of his own choices. He shivered thinking of all the chances he’d had to back out. To refuse. To follow in Gertrude’s footsteps and retain his humanity. Every time, he thought he was making the right choice, but was he? Or was he just selfishly trying to save his own life? 

He wasn’t human. He knew that much, but was he a monster? Sure, he fought it like Martin said, but was that really enough? The truth was that he couldn’t bring himself to regret feeding. He enjoyed it despite knowing it was wrong. And now he had used his powers against Daisy, one of the few people he actually trusted. How much of it had been his own self-defense and how much was it just the Eye protecting an avatar? How human were any of his decisions any more?

Jon shook his head, trying to clear the swirling questions from his thoughts. He could feel the ocean of knowledge pushing against the door in his mind, threatening to reveal something he’d rather not know. Sometimes it was better not to know. His head ached, though whether it was from this mental dissonance or from when Daisy had thrown him against the wall he wasn’t sure. Either way though, he thought, glancing at the file boxes of statements that filled the shelves around him, he knew of a sure-fire way to make it go away. 

Having a statement to relieve the pain caused by the consequences of having a statement. There was a joke in there somewhere. He grabbed a file from the nearest box and flipped it open. A statement he hadn’t yet recorded. Of course. It was rare that he picked up the same file twice. Mindlessly, he clicked on the recorder that hadn’t been there a moment ago and began to read.

****

When he finished the statement, Jon felt better. His heart was still heavy with conflict, but at least the physical pain was gone. He needed to talk to Daisy. Despite their differences and disagreements, he still considered her a friend and he didn’t want that to change. 

Daisy, Martin, and Basira were gathered in a little room some way down the hall from where they had left him. The door was slightly ajar and he could hear the muffled sounds of conversation coming from within. He knocked and slowly pushed open the door. “May I come in?”

When he stepped in, the conversation stopped. Daisy and Basira were sitting side by side in the far corner of the room while Martin had stood and was walking to greet him by the door. “Oh, uh, Jon,” he whispered nervously. “I’m not sure this is really the best time. Daisy’s still-”

“It’s fine, Martin,” Daisy interrupted. “He can come in. I won’t… I’ll be okay.” Her voice was strained. Jon could see her tensing with every step he came closer. She didn’t make eye contact when he stopped in the center of the room. 

“Daisy, I…,” Jon hesitated. He’d never been the best at apologies. She had attacked him first, but he knew he was far from innocent himself. He felt he should at least try to do something, to ask forgiveness. “I’m sorry. I made a mistake… actually a lot of mistakes. And I know that no amount of excuses will change anything, and if you still want to kill me after this, I understand, but I just wanted to let you know you were right. What I did was wrong and-”

“Jon shut up.” Daisy breathed quietly, looking up at him with a grimace. “You don’t need to apologize. If anything, I should be the one to apologize to you. I overreacted. I let my anger get the best of me.” 

She sighed and shook her head. “I guess we both messed up, didn’t we?”

Looking in her eyes, Jon knew she was going to be okay. He sighed and said with a resigned smile, “I guess we did.”


End file.
